Subscribe to our mailing list

From the Principal

I hope that you have all had a restful break and our students are back to school with a focus on achieving their very best and perhaps trying one or two things that are new challenges or experiences.

Term Theme - Achievement

The theme for this term is Achievement. This is obviously a critical and vital part of teaching and Learning at Geraldine High School. We are always striving to see, hear and read about the achievements of all our students in class and also in their wider lives whether it be in sport, culture or community settings. Please see our Deputy Head Boy, Callum Patrick’s speech from our assembly this week elsewhere in this newsletter.

We had 4 students who have been busy in the holidays and focussed on achieving their very best in their respective sporting endeavours.

Tom and Stephen Harding competed in the Oceania Orienteering Championships held in Auckland over Easter which involves elite competitors from Australia and New Zealand. The championships were made up of four races - sprint distance, middle distance, long distance and relay. Tom won the Men's Under 16 Grade in the middle distance and Stephen won the Men's Under 20 Grade, also in the middle distance, which is an outstanding achievement.

Cody Clarke-Wills and Hamish Prattley have been spending a number of months training for the upcoming Rugby season and a few weeks ago they were both selected from students from Waimate High School, Roncalli College, Opihi College, MacKenzie College and Geraldine High School for the Roncalli/Aoraki Championship team. This team is playing in the UC Championship 1st XV competition which has the best Rugby teams' from schools from Nelson to Timaru competing in this. Cody and Hamish have done exceptionally well to make this premier national competition and we look forward to seeing their progress over the season.

Seussical

I was fortunate enough to see this show and it was one of the best school productions I have seen - the talent was amazing. For a number of these students who were in this show, it was a new challenge and experience in doing ‘Seussical’ and my congratulations to all the actors and actresses below who were involved.

"How many of you would have the courage to be involved in this, learning your lines off by heart, learning new songs and dances, learning how to be confident enough so that the nerves don’t take over, learning about the commitment and organisation needed to do a show such as this and taking the chance in doing something that you haven’t tried before?"

Our students did a phenomenal job and we look forward to seeing them continue to showcase these talents in the years to come.

Below are all the staff involved in this show. Without their time, talent and support, shows like this just don’t happen.

‘Seussical’ was Mrs Shirley Lindroos's last production for our school. She has been committed and dedicated to these productions over many years and has given endless hours of her time. We as a school and community thank Mrs Lindroos for her big contributions to this important area of our school culture.

Property Updates

Our School Canteen has been painted over the recent holidays and we have had a transformer upgrade at the front of the school to allow for the increase in the future power usage as we look at greater IT and heating improvements. Our Science Labs redevelopment is making good progress and we expect to have students back in these modernised spaces by term 3.

A financial working party and myself are putting together a 3-4 year property upgrade for the school so that we can get the school and its environment in the best shape possible for our students learning. I will share these plans with our community later this year.

IT Infrastructure and BYOD

Over the holidays we completed the next stage in the improvement of student access to the internet for their learning. This development has involved increasing the wi-fi coverage, the ability to hold more students on our IT system, and an internet filtering system so that we can manage student access to sites. Our next step is to look at BYOD [Bring Your Own Device] for students in our Junior school for 2018. There will be more information regarding this coming out later this term.